Re-Mem-Mem, Re-Mem-Me-Member, Re-Mem-Mem

by Denny Banister

Yes, it is a strange and weird headline, but consider the source – me. If you are anywhere near my age, you probably recall the song inspiring the headline, from the doo-wop days of rock-n’-roll with the bass man singing, Remember When.”

This came to mind when a ‘memory flogging’ letter crossed my desk reminiscing about the ‘good old days’ and asking how many things on their history list ‘…you remember – the more you remember, the older you are.’ It’s kind of a paradox, since the older I get, the fewer things I remember – I think. I forget.

First on the list were candy cigarettes, peppermint sticks with red tips. They came in a pack with brand names like ‘Lucky Sticks.’ I also remember the make-believe cigarettes with talcum powder inside and a little hole on each end. I learned the hard way the idea was to blow the powder out the red end of the fake cigarette, not to inhale the powder into your lungs.

Remember soda pop machines dispensing glass bottles of Whistle, Ne-Hi and RC Cola? I also remember the soda machines where you dropped in your dime, pushed a button selecting flavor, and a cup dropped onto a wire grate with a drain under it – syrup squirted into the cup, followed by carbonated water.

When I was a kid, we couldn’t afford a fancy dial phone – our phone had a circular plate where the dial would have been. You picked up the phone and waited for the operator to ask, “Number, please?” You would respond giving her a telephone number with a word prefix, like HA-rrison or FA-irfax?

Then there were peashooters – I always had one, an oversized straw and a bag of dried peas. They were great fun on school busses and movie theater balconies. And what a wonderful way to help farm prices – sell thousands of bags of peas to kids who will spit them out a straw. Maybe we could invent soybean, corn and wheat shooters to boost prices of those commodities, not to mention milk and pig shooters.

As fun as it is to reminisce about these things, I find it somewhat distressing none of them exist today – but in other ways, we’re better off without them. We have finally learned it is not wise to help kids pretend to smoke, so candy cigarettes are gone. Next to every soda machine dispensing glass bottles of pop were wooden crates holding the empty bottles – and bugs getting a sugar high from the last few drops.

When is the last time you used a dial telephone, much less the cheaper phone with the missing dial? A phone without a dial would send phone bills through the roof today since operator assistance would be required for each and every call.

And peashooters were a real safety hazard – not so much for the people getting hit with the peas as the kids shooting the peas. We would fill our hand with peas, shove the peas into our mouths, and inhale a deep breath. This would be followed by one of two things – the blowing of the peas through the straw, or the near choking to death of the shooter who just sucked peas down his windpipe.

There was one thing on the memory list that really has not changed, however. The question was, “Remember when nobody was prettier than mom?” In spite of the passing years, no one is prettier to me to this day. And yes, my wife understands – she’s a mom too, you know. Happy Mother’s Day.

Editor’s note: Denny Banister of Jefferson City, Mo., is assistant director of information and public relations for the Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.